NATURE MYTHS AND ALLEGORIES 313 



of mighty races, when they sprang to light in their due season, 

 they were endowed with virtues far beyond their seeming. 

 Pregnancy is the note of a true myth. The stuff of man's self 

 has been absorbed and wrought into its substance by a process 

 so analogous to growth, that the more we seek to fathom it 

 the more we find there. The very quaintness of each detail 

 is suggestive, capable of divers applications, fit for varied uses. 

 The wisdom it presents in symbolic shape has been so worn 

 into harmony with human needs and human experience, that 

 it cannot lose its value till the end of time. 



Our artists, whether poets, painters, or musicians, are there- 

 fore right to employ the legends of past ages for the expression 

 of thoughts and emotions belonging to the present. If used 

 with true imaginative insight, there is no cause to fear lest the 

 strain of modern adaptation should destroy the mystic beauty 

 of the antique form. Myths, by reason of their symbolic 

 pregnancy and spontaneity of origin, are everlastingly elastic. 

 Thus Goethe found nothing fitter to his purpose than the 

 Faust legend, when he planned the drama of the nineteenth 

 century. Shelley poured his spirit of revolt and aspiration 

 into the legend of Prometheus. Wagner, wishing to create 

 a new musical drama, extracted material from the story of 

 Tannhauser, from Norse mythology, and from episodes of 

 the Arthurian cycle. William Morris combined the mystic 

 tales of many nations in his ' Earthly Paradise.' Tennyson 

 rehandled the substance of Malory's ' Morte d' Arthur.' 

 Landor touched the height of poetry in the tale of ' Rhaicos,' 

 which transports us to a time when man might love a 

 Hamadryad. In the poem of Agamemnon's meeting with 

 Iphigeneia, he interpreted for modern minds the sublime 

 pathos of the allegory of Lethe. In each and all of these 

 instances, and in many more which might be mentioned, the 

 poet's instinct was a sound one. 



For plastic art, myths and allegories are of even higher 

 value than for poetry. This is because they embody per- 

 manent ideas in sensuous form. They are therefore, by their 

 very essence, exactly of the quality which figurative art 

 demands. I need, at the present moment, only point to the 



